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Firs for the Fish (and the Fishermen)

Pete Alexander, the fisheries program manager for the East Bay Regional Park District, with hundreds of trees bound for the bottom of a lake in Fremont, Calif.Credit
Annie Tritt for The New York Times

For people like Pete Alexander, the best gifts arrive after the holidays.

That is when he receives hundreds of unsold Christmas trees deemed dross by most everyone else and makes them useful again, turning them into habitats for fish in otherwise barren lakes.

“Christmas trees are perfect — just the right size and weight,” said Mr. Alexander, the fisheries program manager for the East Bay Regional Park District, which is based in Oakland, Calif. “And we get them free, because vendors want to get rid of them.”

The trees are taken to a different lake each year, where volunteers bundle them and secure them to the lake bed. Within days, the newly denuded branches become covered with algae, which attract aquatic insects, fish and, ultimately, fishermen.

Similar projects are taking place around the country this year, from Helena, Mont., to Hernando, Miss.

Bryan Ostlund, director of the Pacific Northwest Christmas Tree Association, said vendors faced a difficult task in predicting how many trees to stock each year. They often end up with a surplus.

Phil Londrico, a tree wholesaler who lives in Manhattan, said retailers he supplies are usually left with 5 percent to 10 percent of their inventory. According to the Census of Horticultural Specialties by the Department of Agriculture, wholesalers sold more than 12.8 million Christmas trees in 2009. “So that’s a lot of trees,” Mr. Londrico said.

Most retailers have their surplus turned into mulch or wood chips. In New Orleans, trees have been used to restore coastlines destroyed in hurricanes. One seller said he took some to the zoo to feed the elephants.

But aquatic habitat projects have become increasingly popular destinations for leftover Christmas trees.

“They last a pretty long time — about five years in the lake,” said Lee Mitchell, a natural resource specialist for the Army Corp of Engineers, who is leading a similar campaign this year in Shelbyville, Ill. He expects to receive 500 or more trees. “Fish use them like crazy. And the fishers really like them, too.”

To lure volunteers for the labor, Mr. Mitchell offers an incentive.

“If they help, we give them the GPS coordinates of the trees,” Mr. Mitchell said of the volunteers, many of whom are anglers. “You can go right to the spot, and it’ll be good fishing there.”

A version of this article appears in print on January 5, 2011, on page A11 of the New York edition with the headline: Firs for the Fish (and the Fishermen). Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe